Prieur’s readings

The following are some thought-provoking articles I have perused over the past few days that readers may also find of interest:

• Martin Wolf (Financial Times): What the G2 must discuss now the G20 is over, April 7, 2009.
Given the scale of the world’s macroeconomic imbalances, it is far from obvious that higher regulatory standards alone would have saved the world. This is not just a matter of historical interest. It is also relevant to the sustainability of the recovery.

• Nicholas Taleb (Financial Times): Ten principles for a Black Swan-proof world, April 7, 2009.
We need to return to a world in which entrepreneurs, not bankers, take the risks and companies are born and die every day without making the news.

• Wolfgang Münchau (Financial Times): The London summit has not fixed the crisis, April 5, 2009.
It ducked the question of bank rescue beyond a few meaningless and self-congratulatory statements. Instead, our leaders showed more interest in future crises than in the current one, writes Wolfgang Münchau

• Willem Buiter (Financial Times): How the FASB aids and abets obfuscation by wonky zombie banks, April 3, 2009.
The HFSC used the threat that, if the FASB were not sufficiently accommodating, Congress would legislate on the matter off its own bat to give the zombie banks what they wanted. The FASB blinked and wimped under, as it had before.

• Michael Blastland (BBC): Why numbers no longer win arguments, April 2, 2009.
Numbers used to be cold, hard and clinical – a clincher in any argument. Now look at them: fluffy, soft and left meaningless by woolly-headed thinking.